Saying goodbye to Evernote, finally...

[Unhappy Chappy 3]

Used to be a great product a decade ago.  Then they sold out to a corporate entity I believe, because then it became more and more expensive...

Now it's $159.99!

And not to mention the extremely annoy and constant nags to upgrade... every flip'n time I open it, every time I try to use it.

 

Well, today I found Joplin... open source and FREE! 
I can synchronise for free using a number of existing cloud options I already have, or I can pay a paultry amount for their own cloud service.

$160 per year from Evernote, in this cost-of-living climate... you're kidding right!?!

So... sayonara, auf wiedersehen, good ridance... I'm off to have a better life without this pesky app.  

Signed, Happier Unhappy Chappy


PS I'd be surprised if this gets past the moderators....

[gazumped 11,677]

17 hours ago, Unhappy Chappy said:

PS I'd be surprised if this gets past the moderators....

Suprise!  Oh - and Bye!

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

Do be sure to let us know when Joplin discovers that cooking and serving free lunches has a cost component, and either goes belly up or starts charging.

[idoc 400]

22 hours ago, Unhappy Chappy said:

Used to be a great product a decade ago.  Then they sold out to a corporate entity I believe, because then it became more and more expensive...

Now it's $159.99!

And not to mention the extremely annoy and constant nags to upgrade... every flip'n time I open it, every time I try to use it.

 

Well, today I found Joplin... open source and FREE! 
I can synchronise for free using a number of existing cloud options I already have, or I can pay a paultry amount for their own cloud service.

$160 per year from Evernote, in this cost-of-living climate... you're kidding right!?!

So... sayonara, auf wiedersehen, good ridance... I'm off to have a better life without this pesky app.  

Signed, Happier Unhappy Chappy


PS I'd be surprised if this gets past the moderators....

YOU may have found Joplin "today" but a lot of other users here have found Joplin a long time ago.  And many of them are right back here again.  I think that using a variety of work arounds and hacks you can probably make Joplin work similarly to EN, but it will not be as good.  Ultimately, you may find that the hassle factor was simply not worth the savings.  Many people try things like this with pricey programs eg: Adobe, Word, Quickbooks and sometimes you can cobble together a solution that's "almost as good" but it will certainly not be better.  In some cases it's decidedly worse and ultimately you need to return after having expended a lot of effort.  The increasing costs of products tend to enrage the consumers but often it's something that just needs to be paid and "it's not personal".  For example, Netflix...they raised their rates multiple times and their customers howled and raged and left in droves.  However, they all came back and many more too.  Why, because there aren't many streaming services as good as Netflix.  And if you have to pay $20/month for it,  you will.  EN is similar ie: lots and lots of cheaper alternatives, but they're not nearly as good.

[WilliamL 654]

Joplin? Markdown restricted formatting, no ocr, no mail in notes (unless you pay), no great export options for pdf etc, no tasks….

Joplin is a great idea in theory but it isn’t an Evernote replacement, it’s the next step up from pen and paper. 

[idoc 400]

2 hours ago, WilliamL said:

Joplin? Markdown restricted formatting, no ocr, no mail in notes (unless you pay), no great export options for pdf etc, no tasks….

Joplin is a great idea in theory but it isn’t an Evernote replacement, it’s the next step up from pen and paper. 

This was my point.  There are many such alternatives but they often require layers of other stuff to get to what you have with EN.  Also, some of these alternatives do not have as seamless a web clipper as does EN.

[Leo_R 6]

I was happily using Evernote for years. Free plan which allowed to use the app on two devices, and unlimited in browsers.

Now I found that that free plan now only allows 1 notebook/50 notes in the app AND it's not supported on mobile browsers. That is, I can't use it on my two mobile devices (only in browser on my desktops).

The paid plan is $160/year.

I'm sorry but is it some kind of a joke? It's more expensive than the entire Microsoft Office!

I'm myself a software developer and don't mind paying for software. But the price Evernote wants is simply unreasonable.

As painful as it is will have to probably move everything to OneNote (for which I'm already paying as part of Office anyway).

Too bad because Evernote is a great product.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

13 hours ago, Leo_R said:

I'm myself a software developer and don't mind paying for software. But the price Evernote wants is simply unreasonable.

Pardon me, but evidently you do mind a little, since you didn't pay for Evernote "for years," even when the subscription prices were lower. The new limits on Free are expressly intended to discourage years-long significant professional or personal free use. Whether Evernote's price for a Personal subscription ($130/year, which breaks down to $2.50/week) is unreasonable depends on how you use it. For me, even the Professional price is worth it. If you're only making shopping lists and daily to-dos, then yeah, it's too much. If you're using a significant subset of the features (I doubt if many people use all of them), especially in a business or other professional setting, then maybe it's worth the price. It depends on each user's situation, IMHO.

[Leo_R 6]

48 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Pardon me, but evidently you do mind a little, since you didn't pay for Evernote "for years," even when the subscription prices were lower. The new limits on Free are expressly intended to discourage years-long significant professional or personal free use. Whether Evernote's price for a Personal subscription ($130/year, which breaks down to $2.50/week) is unreasonable depends on how you use it...

Well I was using Evernote in a legitimate way offered by the company.

All my notes are text-only and I don't need Evernote for anything else. All I need is plain text to keep some info here and there. Out of my 300 notes I'm only actively using about 15.

Even the earlier payment plans were too high for my modest needs (in my view, of course) - plus I didn't need any paid features anyway.

Now my access to the existing notes got basically BLOCKED without any prior warnings or notifications (it's blocked by the payment/trial screen). That is I can't even view them.

Now, I just received a reply from Evernote support. It mentions that "any Free user who currently has more than fifty notes and one notebook will still be able to view, edit, export, share, and delete existing notes and notebooks."

Following their troubleshooting steps, it appears that I at least can now access my notes via the app on my Mac. However, any attempt to log in to Evernote via a browser on another Mac blocks access to notes everywhere, including the app (and logging in via browser is never possible - it's always blocked). Clear as mud? It took me about an hour of various attempts to reach this conclusion.

Hopefully, I'll get a solution from Evernote support to at least view my existing notes reliably on supported devices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[idoc 400]

I'm finding that this forum is devolving into gripe sessions from people who resent paying the price or who don't like the various tiers.  It's somewhat annoying since I generally come here to learn interesting things from the EN luminaries on this site.  The only thing that people on this site can provide is help and advice to one another.  We have no control over the prices and it has already been well established that EN itself does not participate in any of these discussions.  Not even clear to me if they monitor anything here.  Yes, there are some annoying things with EN and experts on this site can provide helpful hacks and workarounds to them.  I would prefer that there were moderators to simply put all of the gripes in a sub forum and allow the rest of us to benefit from the EN illuminati .  There are very few forums around that have people at this level of expertise who are so willing to give of their time to help other people.  It's truly remarkable and we risk losing their enthusiasm with all this tangential stuff.

[rge4 0]

Following the online Help to Export notes... there's no Export option to select.

so frustrating.  Would love some real help.

[CalS 5,281]

Well, it's been death by a thousand cuts.  Some absolute direction from BS might have helped mitigate things a bit.  Something like an email campaign of we are removing the free program as of x date (ample notice) and sign up or move on and it was a pleasure serving you but we can't afford a free tier anymore.  And here are the ways to export your data. 

Though with the histrionics attached to this I'm not sure how well a rational approach would even register.  Just rip the band aid off. Wouldn't have been the first company to do such a thing.  Stuff happens,.  🤷‍♂️

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

@Leo_R, I'm glad to hear you've been able to get some help from support. Have you checked to see how many devices you have registered on your account (https://www.evernote.com/Devices.action)? If there are more than 2 on a free account, you'll need to pick which one(s) to log out from and revoke/unsync. (You're also only allowed 2 unsyncs/month, so it has to be done carefully.) Hopefully once you're within those limits you'll be able to access the notes again.

Personally, I hope that once the dust settles, Evernote will once again offer a low-cost, low-feature-set option for users such as yourself. Not that free is no longer really an option for anything but a tryout, such a tier might attract some users (which the older Plus option apparently did not).

[Twitchly 28]

19 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Personally, I hope that once the dust settles, Evernote will once again offer a low-cost, low-feature-set option for users such as yourself.

This.

I was a free subscriber for years, then upgraded to paid in order to help keep Evernote great. Then after some years I upgraded again when the tiers changed. But Evernote has now increased its fees to a level that makes sense only to super-users, with costs surpassing even MS Office and Photoshop/Lightroom/Bridge.

I can only assume Bending Spoons wants to maintain its business with fewer customers paying premium prices. But I hope I’m wrong; I’d love to see them offer a (much cheaper) basic plan with fewer monthly uploads and no business features. Preferably before my subscription expires in the spring. 

In the meantime, I’ve started transferring my Evernote content to another app. It’s a hassle but a good learning experience: shame on me for having put all my eggs in one basket in this fickle business. I’m going forward with an eye toward flexibility.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

27 minutes ago, Twitchly said:

….  I’m going forward with an eye toward flexibility.

Good intention: Check your export options before committing. Most apps happily import ENEX, but suck on exporting 

[gazumped 11,677]

Hmmn.  Imagine you're an airplane manufacturer who suddenly discovers their passengers doors have a tendency to blow off.  You might want to spend a little time fixing that annoying quirk before you develop any more variations on the standard airframe.  At a much lower level (and there's a pun in there for anyone prepared to dig) Evernote seems to be intent on making sure that the basics just work before they add new bells and whistles...

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

On 1/11/2024 at 1:17 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Do be sure to let us know when Joplin discovers that cooking and serving free lunches has a cost component, and either goes belly up or starts charging.

I don't like Joplin all that much, for a variety of reasons. 

But it's a free open source software. While one person (Laurent) seems to be doing most of the core work (or, at least, most of coordination) there's a whole community of code contributors. It's very unlikely that Joplin would ever become a paid software, as it is being developed as a hobby project by a community of people and the source code is always freely available for anyone to compile or fork. It's also unlikely that the development will fully cease even if Laurent quits working on it, as there's too many active users and contributors, and someone will step in and pick up the code.

In a way, Joplin is like a Linux distro. As long as enough people with coding skills have interest in it, someone will maintain it. And by its very nature, it seems to attract people who like coding. (One of the biggest issues I have with Markdown is that you're not as much writing your note as coding it).

[Leo_R 6]

21 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Have you checked to see how many devices you have registered on your account (https://www.evernote.com/Devices.action)? If there are more than 2 on a free account, you'll need to pick which one(s) to log out from and revoke/unsync. (You're also only allowed 2 unsyncs/month, so it has to be done carefully.)

 

Oh yeah. That was yet another level of confusion. My usage pattern was always this: Evernote app on Samsung phone, browsers on 2 Macs. Browser usage was always unlimited.

During my attempts to unblock my access to notes I obviously quickly reached that 2 unsyncs/month limit (which I wasn't aware of). I also noticed that in the device list was a new entity: Evernote Web (at least I don't remember seeing it before). I assume it's just Evernote in a browser? And does it mean then that browser access is now allowed on one device only?

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

On 1/11/2024 at 6:12 PM, WilliamL said:

Joplin? Markdown restricted formatting, no ocr, no mail in notes (unless you pay), no great export options for pdf etc, no tasks….

Joplin is a great idea in theory but it isn’t an Evernote replacement, it’s the next step up from pen and paper. 

That's not quite true...

There's OCR (via plugin, and AFAIK they are working on making it part of the base package).

There's pdf export (via desktop app).

There's basic task functionality with alerts. And a few decent enough plugins.

There's actually fairly decent functionality overall if you use desktop app and plugins.

Which is where my problems come.

I use mobile clients 3/4 of my time. Joplin's mobile client on iOS is very limited. Most of the niceties that I actually like are only available on the desktop.

More importantly, I don't trust community developed software with any sensitive data, be it financial or health records or anything else. It's just too valuable and too easy of a target. This is the prime reason I no longer use Linux as my primary OS. I don't want to start a holy war, and fully respect other people's views, but imho a software project with millions lines of code submitted by thousands of anonymous contributors from all over the world is a disaster waiting to happen, and I have neither the skills nor the time to properly secure it on my end. And I absolutely don't buy the "millions eyes on the code" line. Most of these eyes have no idea what to look for, and those who do are very busy working on paid projects. 

But if you don't have issues with FOSS, and mostly use desktop apps, and don't mind Markdown, Joplin i's really not that bad.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

34 minutes ago, Leo_R said:

Oh yeah. That was yet another level of confusion. My usage pattern was always this: Evernote app on Samsung phone, browsers on 2 Macs. Browser usage was always unlimited.

During my attempts to unblock my access to notes I obviously quickly reached that 2 unsyncs/month limit (which I wasn't aware of). I also noticed that in the device list was a new entity: Evernote Web (at least I don't remember seeing it before). I assume it's just Evernote in a browser? And does it mean then that browser access is now allowed on one device only?

Yes, Evernote Web would be Evernote in a browser. Each instance of it counts as one "device," meaning if you've got it open in 2 browser tabs, on  the same machine or different ones, you've used your 2 devices.

BUT WAIT! It seems that there may literally be more. Looking at Evernote's plan comparison page and system limits page, I no longer see any reference to a 2-device limit for the Free plan. The link to the "Understanding the device limit" page is now dead also. Did that limit get removed when I wasn't looking?

[PinkElephant 8,127]

@Leo_R The web client counts as one „device“, no matter on how many physical devices and browsers it is used.

[WilliamL 654]

1 hour ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

I use mobile clients 3/4 of my time. Joplin's mobile client on iOS is very limited. Most of the niceties that I actually like are only available on the desktop.

This is me too, I don’t consider a feature a feature unless it works on more than desktop. I need consistency on mobile and tablet and Joplin is perhaps the worst of all when it comes to this. 

[WilliamL 654]

23 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

BUT WAIT! It seems that there may literally be more. Looking at Evernote's plan comparison page and system limits page, I no longer see any reference to a 2-device limit for the Free plan. The link to the "Understanding the device limit" page is now dead also. Did that limit get removed when I wasn't looking?

Oft it looks like you’re right! The two device limit is gone which is great news for anyone who used Evernote but doesn’t want to currently, no restriction to accessing their data now if this is correct. 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

3 minutes ago, WilliamL said:

Oft it looks like you’re right! The two device limit is gone which is great news for anyone who used Evernote but doesn’t want to currently, no restriction to accessing their data now if this is correct. 

I created a new thread just for this, so people can find the info easily: 

 

[Areyoukidding 4]

I concur with your dissatisfction and still stand amazed wondering in what universe does a company double its annual rate.....? For those of you who feel this platform is hijacked with complaints, kindly and respectfully redirect me. And perhaps assist me to find an alternative?

Please consider that I have used EN for 20 years, almost since its launch. At some point along the way when it was an option to do so I subscribed as a personal user because I wanted to support the company, though at the time I didn't use the product consistently or optimimally. After subscribing I did appreciate multiple notebooks, using the webclipper and the ability to open my account on any device that I logged into with either app or web page. That's about all the features I used and at that, not commonly. I was not a collaborator.

Now after 20 years, with this cost doubling in 1 year, I feel this is a form of ransomware. The app has 20 intermittent years of my research, that I painstakingly organized into separate notebooks (though understandably not needed). There was little to no significant notice that this would happen or method laid out how to export my notebooks into 1 notebook so that I could at least become a personal user, though what would it matter if limited to 50 notes? Would I still get web clipper and open on any device? Could using stacks allow me to keep some semblance of organization?

During my previous years of use I was working and now look to wind down and enjoy the personal use aspect of EN. In other words, use it more commonly for research on aging optimally and following up on existing notes. Unfortunately with the increased cost of technology for survival (laptops, cell phones, earbuds, cloud storage services, music and video streaming, etc), it is a real stretch to see a doubling in cost of this app in just 1 year. I would like to close my account, but am held ransom at least temporarily while I figure out how to save my data, probably to One Note or Google Docs, though I really liked that EN was not one of the big dogs who do unimaginable acts with our data.

If anyone can provide a well trusted link or info for exporting to any valid alternatives I would appreciate it. Again, I am not a heavy user and could probably contain most of my notes into 5-6 Notebooks if pressed to do so (though it would lose much of the value because of the disorganization). 

Thank you and I am sincerely sorry for all of us who struggle with the new pricing. Kudos to those of you who don't. Thank you to the faithful users who offer support. May you Level Up and help bring prices down.

Sent from AOL on Android

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

22 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

That's not quite true...

There's OCR (via plugin, and AFAIK they are working on making it part of the base package).

There's pdf export (via desktop app).

There's basic task functionality with alerts. And a few decent enough plugins.

There's actually fairly decent functionality overall if you use desktop app and plugins.

Which is where my problems come.

I use mobile clients 3/4 of my time. Joplin's mobile client on iOS is very limited. Most of the niceties that I actually like are only available on the desktop.

More importantly, I don't trust community developed software with any sensitive data, be it financial or health records or anything else. It's just too valuable and too easy of a target. This is the prime reason I no longer use Linux as my primary OS. I don't want to start a holy war, and fully respect other people's views, but imho a software project with millions lines of code submitted by thousands of anonymous contributors from all over the world is a disaster waiting to happen, and I have neither the skills nor the time to properly secure it on my end. And I absolutely don't buy the "millions eyes on the code" line. Most of these eyes have no idea what to look for, and those who do are very busy working on paid projects. 

But if you don't have issues with FOSS, and mostly use desktop apps, and don't mind Markdown, Joplin i's really not that bad.

So, now I got curious myself, and downloaded the pre-release version of Joplin which has the OCR built-in.

Basically, it will OCR attached PDFs in the background, and when searching for text, it will show the list of PDFs that have that text in them. Then you need to individually open and search inside of each file to find that text in that specific file.  I don't believe it works on pasted images, at least not yet. But then, it's just a pre-release. So, they seem to be moving in the right direction. 

[Leo_R 6]

On 1/13/2024 at 5:05 PM, PinkElephant said:

@Leo_R The web client counts as one „device“, no matter on how many physical devices and browsers it is used.

So do I understand correctly that the current allowance for Free users is the following (by way of example):

-One app on a mobile device + browsers on unlimited desktops

OR

-App on 2 devices only (and NO browser access anywhere).

 

[agsteele 2,951]

Yes, that's correct

[Leo_R 6]

7 hours ago, agsteele said:

Yes, that's correct

Thanks for the confirmation.

This limitation is also new: previously, browser usage was unlimited, the only limitation was that the app could be used on 2 devices only.

 

[agsteele 2,951]

The browser web client was included in the device limits a number of years ago.

[Leo_R 6]

14 hours ago, agsteele said:

The browser web client was included in the device limits a number of years ago.

Ok I see. I guess I didn't have to deal with it up until now as Evernote actually did honor its advertised device allowance.

Evernote now stopped honoring the device allowance (which is part of the problem I described in my post from Friday).

Evernote now falsely claims that I exceeded my limit on synced devices. Which, once again, I did not.

The try/upgrade screen now blocks me from accessing my notes everywhere.

 

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,127]

Sure they block access when you exceed the device limit. There is the device limit, and there is the unsync limit of 2 unsyncs per30 days.

If you violate it, it can create a lock out. It will lift itself after 30 days, or when you subscribe to a paid plan.

Hints:

This was introduced in 2020 - so no talk about „recent changes“.

I run Free accounts myself, and up to now have not yet managed to lock me out

[hefa 1]

I’m done too.
 

Been using EN for years for small notes and saw fences appearing left right and center with them creating more and more limits. Then about a month ago I couldn’t create any new notes. Then today I had an email saying on Dec 4th they imposed limits - I only got the email TODAY!!!

I already did a trial run of Joplin and proved I can get enough out of that to get by so I’ve exported all Evernote’s and imported them all to Joplin and suddenly I can actually use multiple devices again. True some bit of it aren’t as slick but it works and I won’t be powering up EN again.

The only reason I’m here is because they sent an email telling me of the ‘new’ limits I ran into a month ago, and I wanted to reply and say what I’ve said here, but the email had ‘no reply’ as the sender and nothin in the body I could click to reach a human which felt like another f**k you to actual users, ie don’t provide any options to give feedback, just bark at them fron a distance, so I came through here to write this.

Anyways - EN, see ya…

CC

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

To make a more direct reply: feedback@evernote.com.

[Leo_R 6]

5 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Sure they block access when you exceed the device limit. There is the device limit, and there is the unsync limit of 2 unsyncs per30 days.

If you violate it, it can create a lock out. It will lift itself after 30 days, or when you subscribe to a paid plan.

Hints:

This was introduced in 2020 - so no talk about „recent changes“.

All I know is that up until January 11 I didn't have any issues. And I've been using Evernote for many years.

I never exceeded the device limit. I only had the app running on a single Samsung phone. On my two Macs I didn't even have the app installed - only used browsers.

When I suddenly got locked out of my notes on Thursday, I did start trying to remedy this and yeah quickly run out of the two-unsyncs limit. Who the hell even knew it existed? Evernote never warned me about this limit when unsyncing.

Plus what exceeding limit does even mean? Shouldn't it just observe the last unsync status instead of denying the user access EVERYWHERE?

At one point I installed the app on my Mac in hope that I'll be able to salvage (export) the notes from there - which I, fortunately, could.  After this, the app was blocked and unblocked intermittently for no conceivable reason, and now it's blocked again from yesterday.

There's no denial that something is going on at Evernote and it started sometime recently. It's either the service is messed up - or maybe it's Bending Spoons is trying to get rid of undesired Free users. If it's the latter then they did succeed.

 

 

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,127]

About the unsync: The current device limits are in place since 2020. When locked, the account stays blocked for 30 days.

Without any idea of what may have occurred, the easiest way to get everything working again is to subscribe for a month.

In addition there is a  new plan in effect for Free users since December: You can have a maximum of 1 notebook and 50 notes.

Unless you are below, you can’t create any new notes, or move them. You should be able to open and edit existing ones.

Subscribing will lift this restriction as well.

[Al Padilla 19]

On 1/12/2024 at 2:39 PM, idoc said:

I'm finding that this forum is devolving into gripe sessions from people who resent paying the price or who don't like the various tiers.  It's somewhat annoying since I generally come here to learn interesting things from the EN luminaries on this site.  The only thing that people on this site can provide is help and advice to one another.  We have no control over the prices and it has already been well established that EN itself does not participate in any of these discussions.  Not even clear to me if they monitor anything here.  Yes, there are some annoying things with EN and experts on this site can provide helpful hacks and workarounds to them.  I would prefer that there were moderators to simply put all of the gripes in a sub forum and allow the rest of us to benefit from the EN illuminati .  There are very few forums around that have people at this level of expertise who are so willing to give of their time to help other people.  It's truly remarkable and we risk losing their enthusiasm with all this tangential stuff.

But Evernote chat is always "down" - i.e., they have less than no interest in interacting with their paying customers.  I have a lot of notes, and some combine text and jpg's.  I guess 3 options are OneNote, Joplin and Notion; I'll have to view tutorials and see how to transfer.  I, too, have been a paying user for over 15 years.  

[PinkElephant 8,127]

It’s not always down - I used it last summer myself. It was taken down when v10 launched, to free resources for tickets. It was offline maybe 4-5 months then, came back and was available for 3 years in a row.

And it was taken down again, for the same reason late last summer.

We all agree that it sucks, especially when the ticket reaction time goes beyond 2 weeks, as it did. They probably simply got swamped.

Telling it is out of a lack of interest by EN is a typical comment for the web: Malicious and unfounded.

[RJLUK 307]

Spam pimping lamps give me a break....

[Leo_R 6]

2 hours ago, George3456 said:

Farewell, Evernote!...though at the time I didn't use the product...

@George3456 is a spambot. All his 6 posts are pure spam with links to product sales. Any Evernote-related part is just copy-pasted (or AI generated). Mods may want to remove this user (as well as its posts).

[gazumped 11,677]

17 minutes ago, Leo_R said:

Mods may want to remove this user (as well as its posts).

Noted,  thanks

[Grimper 2]

On 1/11/2024 at 12:17 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Do be sure to let us know when Joplin discovers that cooking and serving free lunches has a cost component, and either goes belly up or starts charging.

I had a friend many years ago who used to give away for free collections of icons that he created.  I remember this discussion:

Me:  So how do you make any money giving them away for free?

Him:  Volume!

 

[gazumped 11,677]

Just now, Grimper said:

Him:  Volume!

Hmmn.  So the more you give away for free,  the more money you don't make?

[orangemonkey 3]

I have never believed in free lunches and prefer user pays over advertising-funded content any day.

So I happily paid for Evernote for years, what caused me to turn off was the exorbitant price increase last year and in particular the way it was executed. If you decided to cancel your subscription instead of accepting the increase, you were offered a discount. I could have accepted that discount but that felt like rewarding behaviour that punishes its users who aren’t inclined to play the game or are too time poor (hint if we wanted to play games we’d by a PlayStation not a note taking software). Unfortunately these sorts of tactics are being deployed by platforms and software vendors all over, and users are rightly getting sick of it.

Blogger Cory Doctorow calls this trend enshittification, where platforms rely on the high switching costs to extract more and more value from their users by breaking their initial promises bit-by-bit.

I had stuck around on a free account to see if Evernote’s decline turned around and if it did I would start paying again. The new 50 limit on notes in the free version shows they’re doubling down which means the free version is only going to get worse and then the paying customers will get screwed harder.

But i would never have predicted the final nail in the coffin. It’s the trolling of dissatisfied users on here by paid staff!! For me this is truly a new low. I honestly feel for the staff that have to do that as part of their job, so no hard feelings to them personally. But paying more for a product so they can pay people to abuse their difficult users on their community pages, that’s a software feature I can do without.

[gazumped 11,677]

On 2/3/2024 at 9:25 PM, orangemonkey said:

trolling of dissatisfied users on here by paid staff!!

For the record we're not paid staff and the reason we're less than patient with many complaints is because most posters really do believe that they deserve a free lunch for their "support".

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

On 2/3/2024 at 4:25 PM, orangemonkey said:

But i would never have predicted the final nail in the coffin. It’s the trolling of dissatisfied users on here by paid staff!! For me this is truly a new low. I honestly feel for the staff that have to do that as part of their job, so no hard feelings to them personally. But paying more for a product so they can pay people to abuse their difficult users on their community pages, that’s a software feature I can do without.

I'm going to pile on here, though I accept your reasoning about Evernote's handling of price increases (I'm less inclined to predict the future). Honestly, I'd like to know what makes you think there are paid staff here "trolling." All Evernote staff have a badge to that effect in their profile information, so that part of the statement is just false. As for "trolling" ... a lot of aggrieved users have posted some really hostile or angry rants, and gotten responses in a similar vein, resulting in further aggrieved responses. As in American football, I guess, it's always the second guy committing the foul who gets flagged for it. If someone needs to leave Evernote because they've been paying and the cost has gone up, fine (though loud, accusatory announcements of their departure seem a little pointless). But for free users to declare that they feel violated/swindled/abused in some way because now they can't add their 3,231st note to an account they created and used for professional purposes without paying a dime ... that stretches my patience, and I'll admit to some fairly sharp responses. But not to trolling.

[orangemonkey 3]

"I'm going to pile on here" ... but I don't do trolling ... ummmm sure

For the record I never said either of you were paid employees, so really don't get why you got so defensive. But there are a number of highly involved accounts that have made voluminous comments that include detailed comments that only a paid employee (or a stalker) would retain.

I'm happy to take you at your word (though really we have no way of knowing) that you are just big fans of the product. In which case you may wish to reconsider the "pile on" approach as it contributes to turning people off the product you profess to love. For every one person that comments another 10+ will read and empathise with the person you're piling on to.

Why my "loud accusatory announcement"? Because I did care about Evernote and had invested time and money into using the product and embedding it into my workflow. So I hope that someone at Evernote is paying attention as to why paid customers are leaving. But if they don't themselves care then hopefully it will end up in someone's large language model and assist Evernote's future competition on designing a commercial strategy that doesn't exploit the stickiness of its customers in such an extreme way. And I have no qualms 'accusing' Evernote in such a manner, because their approach has been utterly shameless, and lo and behold came straight on the heels of being acquired by new owners.

And by the way, these are owners that have the gumption to claim in their 'manifesto' that they have a "Long-term orientation: Seeking to optimize with a long-term view, even at the expense of short-term victories" ... well they're actions say otherwise.

 

 

[AKARJLUK 14]

If you are using for free either accept what is on offer....or pay.

End

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

10 hours ago, orangemonkey said:

"I'm going to pile on here" ... but I don't do trolling ... ummmm sure

For the record I never said either of you were paid employees, so really don't get why you got so defensive. But there are a number of highly involved accounts that have made voluminous comments that include detailed comments that only a paid employee (or a stalker) would retain.

I'm happy to take you at your word (though really we have no way of knowing) that you are just big fans of the product. In which case you may wish to reconsider the "pile on" approach as it contributes to turning people off the product you profess to love. For every one person that comments another 10+ will read and empathise with the person you're piling on to.

Why my "loud accusatory announcement"? Because I did care about Evernote and had invested time and money into using the product and embedding it into my workflow. So I hope that someone at Evernote is paying attention as to why paid customers are leaving. But if they don't themselves care then hopefully it will end up in someone's large language model and assist Evernote's future competition on designing a commercial strategy that doesn't exploit the stickiness of its customers in such an extreme way. And I have no qualms 'accusing' Evernote in such a manner, because their approach has been utterly shameless, and lo and behold came straight on the heels of being acquired by new owners.

And by the way, these are owners that have the gumption to claim in their 'manifesto' that they have a "Long-term orientation: Seeking to optimize with a long-term view, even at the expense of short-term victories" ... well they're actions say otherwise.

So, just to be clear: you accuse somebody of working for Evernote and trolling; but you don't say who you mean; when two people who might well be targets of your accusations respond, you fold your hands in innocence--and yet accuse them of trolling.

We're all grownups here. If you want to accuse somebody of being Evernote staff and trolling, name them.

FWIW, I wasn't actually thinking about you when I spoke of "loud accusatory announcements." So maybe we're even.

 

[Bill W 0]

On 1/11/2024 at 4:31 PM, idoc said:

YOU may have found Joplin "today" but a lot of other users here have found Joplin a long time ago.  And many of them are right back here again.  I think that using a variety of work arounds and hacks you can probably make Joplin work similarly to EN, but it will not be as good.  Ultimately, you may find that the hassle factor was simply not worth the savings.  Many people try things like this with pricey programs eg: Adobe, Word, Quickbooks and sometimes you can cobble together a solution that's "almost as good" but it will certainly not be better.  In some cases it's decidedly worse and ultimately you need to return after having expended a lot of effort.  The increasing costs of products tend to enrage the consumers but often it's something that just needs to be paid and "it's not personal".  For example, Netflix...they raised their rates multiple times and their customers howled and raged and left in droves.  However, they all came back and many more too.  Why, because there aren't many streaming services as good as Netflix.  And if you have to pay $20/month for it,  you will.  EN is similar ie: lots and lots of cheaper alternatives, but they're not nearly as good.

I never went back to Netflix. 

[Lowdown 10]

 

Per Bending Spoons CEO:

“Yes, a price increase will generally lead to a loss of customers,” he says. “But if you can do it right, it will be a net positive when you also consider that you're retaining some of the more committed customers, which then contribute greater revenues that you can reinvest in the product.”

https://sifted.eu/articles/bending-spoons-italy-startup-ipo

Uh, Losing customers is their model?

 

Looks like the made it appear profitable through layoffs.

? How will that help the reinvestment? 

 

 Lacking a stable basic tier,  they are "harvesting" the top tier's revenue and calling it  "Now Profitable"?      Classic arbitrage.

So far

[Jon/t 1,293]

1 minute ago, Lowdown said:

How will that help the reinvestment? 

They use the profit which is money to reinvest in the product, hire folk and make it better. 

You can't do this when losing money. 

[s2sailor 2,207]

9 minutes ago, Lowdown said:

Lacking a stable basic tier

They have decided rightly or wrongly they do not want to be in the low-end market.  Shedding millions(?) of free users had to have helped the bottom line plus there was some percentage of converted users and everyone is now at the higher rate, so I'm happy but not surprised that they are now profitable.  Time will tell if the new features help to grow the paying population and business.

[gazumped 11,677]

@Lowdown - double posting is against the Forum Code of Conduct (that's 2)...

[idoc 400]

Nobody likes to pay more for anything and this is understandable.  On the other hand, when I see weekly updates and constant improvements it shows me that the company is investing in the product and is committed.  When I look at how v10 was in the first few weeks and then compare to how it is now I feel that it has come a very long way indeed.  I have seen massive software price increases in many products that simply went from bad to worse (Quicken, Quickbooks, Acrobat etc).  Paying more for something that is progressively worsening is truly a slap in the face.  However, paying more for something that is incrementally improving is a different story.  I realize that a lot of people don't see it this way because they were perfectly content with Legacy and are now comparing it to a more expensive product that they don't like as much.  Nonetheless, for many reasons which we do NOT need to revive, we no longer have that option.  So the real issue is that we were paying less for a v10 which was unusable and we are now paying more for a v10 which is stable, very usable and improving daily.  In fact, if there existed a more expensive solution that was better than v10 I would happily pay for that one instead.  

[Cristiano478 152]

26 minutos atrás, idoc disse:

Nobody likes to pay more for anything and this is understandable.  On the other hand, when I see weekly updates and constant improvements it shows me that the company is investing in the product and is committed.  

I totally agree with you. Just to illustrate, below are recent blog posts warning about new features and improvements. Look how much stuff:

1 - https://evernote.com/blog/20-improvements-jan-march-2024

2 - https://evernote.com/blog/ai-edit

3 - https://evernote.com/blog/microsoft-outlook-calendar

4 - https://evernote.com/blog/14-features-for-all 

5 - https://evernote.com/blog/new-ui-2024 

6 - https://evernote.com/blog/2023-recap 

7 - https://evernote.com/blog/faster-web-downsync 

8 - https://evernote.com/blog/update-october-4-outage-a-big-migration-and-a-better-infrastructure 

9 - https://evernote.com/blog/future-proofing-evernotes-foundations